Chapter 20 The Discourses of Resilience, ‘Enculturation’ and Identity in Aboriginal Mental Health Research Tara L. Holton, Gregory M. Brass, & Laurence J. Kirmayer Sir Mortimer B. Davis–Jewish General Hospital & McGill University, Canada SUMMARY Resilience, a construct connoting the ability to adjust positively or recover easily in the face of adversity, is increasingly applied to mental health research and practice regarding Aboriginal populations. This research seeks to identify protective factors involved in resilience, as well as how such factors contribute to an individual’s positive adaptation. While the concept of resilience has received a variety of criticisms in the general literature in recent years (Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000), there has been little critique of the construct as it is applied to Aboriginal populations. As part of a larger project examining concepts of resilience among indigenous peoples, this paper focuses on the use of the concept of ‘enculturation’, in recent literature on resilience among Aboriginal populations. The view of culture implicit in the concept of enculturation is at odds with current anthropological thinking and has specific implications for thinking about the role of identity in the challenging situations faced by many indigenous peoples. DISCOURSES OF RESILIENCE Over the last 30 years, the concept of resilience in psychology and psychiatry has undergone significant changes in how it is defined and employed in research and clinical literature. At present, resilience is generally understood to indicate the ability to adjust positively or recover easily in the face of adversity (Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000). When the concept originated in the 1970s, some researchers who studied children facing developmental difficulties labeled those who thrived despite high risk as ‘invulnerable’ (Anthony, 1974; Garmezy, 1971). Resilience was understood to be an unusual characteristic, displayed by exceptional children who, despite severe adversity, developed into normal and healthy individuals (Masten, 2001). Invulnerability was seen as a testament to an individual’s constitution. The vulnerable child was likened to a doll made of glass or brittle plastic, which could crack, fracture or shatter easily, while the invulnerable child was like a doll made of steel, not easily dented or damaged (Anthony & Cohler, 1987). Although environmental factors were seen as protective, the child was seen as having an unchanging constitution and resilience, therefore, was viewed as part of the intrinsic character of the individual. In the early history of resilience research, invulnerability was generally understood to be simply the absence of vulnerability. Attempts were made to characterize the invulnerable child as having specific qualities, including, for example, health, high energy, a good relationship with the mother, high self-esteem, and the ability to function autonomously (Anthony, 1974; Masten & Garmezy, 1985). Researchers viewed resilient or invulnerable children as those who had the ability to override their environment, and choose their own trajectory rather than have the environment dictate Discourses of Resilience, Enculturation and Identity 195 the outcome (Anthony, 1974). Low-risk environmental circumstances were simply one aspect influencing the invulnerable child, for whom inborn, unchanging qualities firmly determined their invulnerability. More recently, research has evolved to conceive of resilience as a process that emerges as the individual develops in accordance with changes they encounter in their lives, rather than as a fixed characteristic of the person or personality trait (Luthar et al., 2000). There is interest not only in what factors influence resilience, but in how the variety of factors an individual is exposed to in their lives might interact to contribute to resilience (Luthar, 1999). Resilience is no longer conceived of as an unusual characteristic, but is recognized as a common outcome reflecting “normative processes” (Masten, 2001, p. 234). Masten suggests that basic adaptive processes result in resilience under ordinary circumstances, while resilience is impaired when events undermine these adaptive processes, which include cognitive development, motivation to learn, and regulation of emotions. Thus, resilience has moved from being an unusual characteristic found only in certain hardy children, to a normal process which all children may exhibit, given the right circumstances. As research on resilience expands, it is increasingly applied to studies involving people of all ages, and groups from a variety of cultures and backgrounds, who face specific types of challenges. Examples of these diverse groups include: victims of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Young, 2007); gay and lesbian individuals who experience marginalization (Bonanno, Moskowitz, Pappa & Folkman, 2005; Russell & Richard, 2003; Sanders & Kroll, 2000); and Aboriginal peoples from communities that face a variety of perceived risk factors such as low socioeconomic status and high rates of substance abuse (Brady, 1993; Burack, Blidner, Flores, & Fitch, 2007; Stout, 2003). This broad application of the concept of resilience has involved shifts in the meaning of the concept—some explicit and intended, others more implicit or unexamined. In this paper we explore the implicit meanings of the concept of resilience as applied to Aboriginal peoples and communities. Our aim is to examine the ways in which resilience is constructed within research on Aboriginal peoples, and to examine the uses of this construct. We approach this through a discourse analysis of resilience literature that focuses on Aboriginal peoples. Discourse analysis allows us to examine the basis on which the resilience literature makes claims to truth, and explore the potential social and political implications of these claims (Fee, 2000). In the case of Aboriginal peoples, resilience research has been grafted onto a flourishing literature regarding the mental health needs and psychological wellbeing of indigenous populations and communities in North America and around the world (Waldram, 2004). Researchers and communities alike have become interested in protective factors that may contribute to resilience among those Aboriginal peoples who have faced adversities as a result of historical processes of colonization, marginalization and forced assimilation. Although, there is great diversity across Aboriginal communities in Canada, they have faced a common historical predicament and contemporary challenges with negative effects on their mental and physical health (Kirmayer, Brass, & Tait, 2000). This paper does not present an empirical analysis of resilience research regarding Aboriginal peoples, but an examination of the construct of resilience as it is found in a sample of the literature. The literature examined was obtained through a search of the PsychINFO database for the years 1984-2006, using the keywords ‘resilience’ and ‘Aboriginal’. The keyword Aboriginal was expanded to include other relevant terms 196 Tara L. Holton, Gregory M. Brass, & Laurence J. Kirmayer commonly used in the literature to refer to Aboriginal peoples, namely First Nations, Inuit, Indigenous, Métis and Native. This yielded 25 articles for analysis. The articles focused on a wide variety of Aboriginal peoples from Canada, The United States, Australia and New Zealand. THE CONSTRUCT OF ABORIGINAL RESILIENCE The discursive analysis revealed that the notion of resilience amongst Aboriginal peoples appears within the literature examined to be distinctive in comparison to the general literature, and was intricately linked to the concept of ‘enculturation’. This construct has a variety of implications, which are discussed in the following sections. An ‘At Risk’ Population The notion of resilience implies that an individual or group has faced some heightened level of risk or adversity. Accordingly, the psychological literature relevant to the topic of resilience among Aboriginal peoples can be separated into two categories, addressing risk and resilience, respectively. Present throughout the literature on resilience among Aboriginal peoples is the implication that this diverse group is an ‘at risk’ population; that is, Aboriginal peoples are viewed as more likely than the general population to be exposed to and susceptible to a variety of risk factors for illness, developmental difficulties or social problems. The concept of risk has come under sustained critical examination by social scientists (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991), who suggest that advanced industrial capitalist societies have become so conscious of and adverse toward a multitude of fears, perils and threats, they have become ‘risk societies’. Some have argued that the medical literature has created the appearance of a ‘risk epidemic’ (Skolbekken, 1995). In the mid-1960s less than 1% of the articles published in the leading medical journals were concerned with risk, compared to the early 1990s when the proportion increased to 6- 11%. Because the health and medical literature has a significant influence on social relations in Western societies, this trend has begun to reshape notions of selfhood and subjectivity, and it has the potential to influence notions of self across cultures more globally in a form of ‘cultural imperialism’ (Førde, 1998). Writing on the experience of women living under the threat of breast cancer, Sandra Gifford (1986) points out that while risk may have specific meanings and